


An Empty Highway Between Panacea and Tate's Hell

by moemachina



Category: Annihilation (2018)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: The Shimmer refracted everything within it. Everything was torn apart -- and then braided together, tight and entwined.  Everything was dissolved. Nothing was lost.





	An Empty Highway Between Panacea and Tate's Hell

Lena was simultaneously surprised and unsurprised when Lomax told her that she was being discharged from the base.

It was ten days since she had returned. It was ten days since the Anomaly had ended. The "Anomaly" was the word chosen by Lomax for his official reports, which he was writing for all the other unknown government agencies who claimed jurisdiction over Area X. It was a hopeful word. An anomaly was singular, unique, unrepeated. An anomaly would not come again. For an anomaly, there was no point in protections and prophylactics. 

"Why are you surprised?" Lomax asked her, and Lena realized, belatedly, that she had said something aloud. 

"Oh," she said. "Well. You know. And I know. Considering everything. It would be easy for me to...disappear." 

"We don't do that," Lomax said. "We're a scientific endeavor. And you're not a prisoner. And nobody's going to disappear. That's not how we do things." 

Lena saw that he had misunderstood her, but she did not correct him.

Inside her, a little voice whispered, _they would absolutely one-hundred-percent disappear you if they could jesus christ haven't you ever heard of black sites man_ , but she did not repeat these words either. 

Instead, she idly scratched the tattoo on her left forearm as she asked, "And Kane?" 

"He'll be released from observation as well," Lomax said. "Of course." 

They were sitting in a beige room without windows, and Lena shifted against her plastic chair. "What life are we returning to?" 

"Your regular life," Lomax said. "Baltimore. Johns Hopkins. Teaching. Research." 

"Do I still have a job?" Lena asked. "Didn't I disappear four months ago?" 

"Ventress made arrangements with the university, before your mission," Lomax said calmly. "You were put on leave, but you still have a job. Apparently, Hopkins didn't make a fuss. Of course, it's not the first time the government has appropriated one of their professors, after all." He chuckled at this joke-that-was-not-a-joke. 

In Lena's head, she heard someone say _do you know how much pentagon funding supports hopkins do you know about their drone research do you know about the security clearances required by the university administration_ but Lena frowned and brushed back her hair with one hand and the voice subsided. Lena had been a soldier, after all. She wasn't bothered by her university's military contracts. 

_you could be_ something whispered, a little stubbornly, _you could be bothered_

"Unfortunately," Lomax was saying, "I don't know the state of your finances or house payments--" 

"It's automatic," Lena said, a little absently. She thought of four months of unmown grass and unraked leaves and a refrigerator full of moldy horrors. "The mortgage, I mean. I automated all our bill payments a long time ago." 

Lomax smiled. "Then you still have a house. And a job. And a life you can step right back into." 

Lena said nothing, even though part of her was saying -- in clipped, precise language -- that she needed to seem pleased and relieved and excited at this prospect. Lena had faithfully gone through these clipped, precise motions during her daily psychological tests and debriefings for the past ten days. She suspected that her satisfactory evaluations -- her _performances_ \-- were one of the reasons that she and Kane were being released so soon. 

But now, when the end of her ordeal was so close, she could not bring herself to mime a reaction that would have pleased Lomax. Instead, her face was slack as she considered what awaited her in Baltimore. A half-painted bedroom. A set of half-finished syllabi. Daniel.

Kane. 

"Of course," Lomax said, slowly, "we'll need to check in with you occasionally. Interview you and Kane. Take physical samples. Monitor your status." 

"What are you expecting to find?" Lena asked, even though she had expected this. The unknown agencies supervising Area X would continue to surveil her and Kane. They might be released, but they would remain under the microscope. 

_they've taken blood samples every day but what do they see?_

No one had given Lena a microscope. No one had asked Lena for her professional opinion. 

(Not that you would have given it to them.) 

Lomax shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. You and your husband have experienced unprecedented things. We'll want to make sure that you're...re-acclimating to your regular life."

"Our regular life," Lena repeated. "Of course." 

_what disguises are your cells wearing_

"I think you'll find that everything will go back to normal," Lomax said, encouragingly. "I think you'll find that nothing really important has changed."

* * *

The unknown government agencies hovering in the background bought Lena and Kane two plane tickets to Baltimore (with a layover in Atlanta) and arranged for a fresh-scrubbed young woman to drive them to the Tallahassee International Airport at six in the morning. 

Waiting for their driver to bring the car around, Lena watched Kane from the corner of her eyes. She had seen him only sporadically after her return from Area X and not at all for the last few days. 

Kane was still and silent as he stood beside her. Anyone who knew Kane knew that he was not much of a morning person, and anyone might have assumed that he was quiet and withdrawn because he was still half-asleep. 

Lena did not assume this. Lena knew that he was also watching her from the corner of his eyes.

A black car with tinted windows pulled up to the curb beside them. 

"I guess this is our ride," Lena said, moving forward before she could see how Kane reacted and if he knew how to open a car door. Instead, she opened it and clambered inside and busily began pulling her seat belt across her chest, and by the time she had finished, Kane was sitting beside her, buckled, and the door was shut. 

"Good morning!" sang their driver. 

"Morning," Lena said, and Kane murmured something faint and indistinct. 

After that, it was a long, silent drive to the airport, and Lena remained extremely conscious of six inches that separated her from Kane's slowly breathing body on her right. 

Soon they would be even closer, packed together in those little airplane seats with only a plastic armrest to separate them. And then, in Baltimore, their house, their bed...

_don't do it man. don't go back._

(Of course you're going to go back. You're a soldier, and you follow orders. You'll peel back that plastic sheet from your bed, and you'll finish those syllabi, and you'll start teaching again, and everything will go back to the way it was.) 

_it's a tomb and you're just going back there with a ghost._

Lena glanced in the direction of Kane. His eyelashes were lowered, but she could see the dark curve of his pupil turned toward her. 

What did he know? What had he been told? What whispered within him?

The Shimmer refracted everything within it. Everything was torn apart -- and then braided together, tight and entwined. Everything was dissolved. Nothing was lost. 

Her husband had sent him to her. Her husband had wanted him to live. 

_remember, you've got options._

And then, fainter: _you've got obligations_. 

And maybe it was that thought, in the end, that made her decision.

* * *

Their driver let them off at the departures terminal and offered them cheerful good-byes. Lena responded automatically to these human conventions. Kane remained silent. 

The black car drove off. Lena and Kane remained standing there as other travelers passed them, dragging rolling luggage behind them. 

Neither Lena nor Kane had any luggage. Just the nondescript clothing that they were wearing and their tickets and their driver's licenses, which had been conjured up from who-knew-where. 

Lena looked up at Kane, and he gazed steadily back at her. 

She had loved her husband so much, she thought, and she would miss him for the rest of her life. 

_no man is an island. every man is a piece of the continent._

"Do you want to go back to Baltimore?" she asked him. 

He was silent for a moment. "I don't know." 

"Do you want to come with me?" 

He remained expressionless, but he did not hesitate this time. "Yes." 

"Okay," Lena said. She crouched down, as if she was tying the laces on her left sneaker, but instead she was reaching inside her shoe and extracting the debit card that had been tucked within. 

Lena had found it yesterday in a locker that no one had yet thought to examine or clear out -- probably because the owner had no next-of-kin to notify, and so the matter was not exactly pressing, especially when the locker was safely chained with a combination lock. 

Lena had known the combination, just as Lena knew the PIN for the card. 

"Come on," she told Kane. "They'll be able to tell when we don't board the flight, but we have a couple of hours before that happens. We need to find an ATM. And then we're going to go steal a car from the garage." 

(Can you do that?) 

"Can you do that?" Kane asked, as if an echo. 

_hell yes courtesy of my wild and misspent youth_

"I think so," Lena said, and she smiled in spite of herself. "I think I might even be kind of good at it?" 

(And what then?) 

"And then...and then we'll see," Lena said. 

Kane nodded. "Yes," he said again. 

Absently, Lena ran her thumb over the surface of the plastic debit card in her hand. She knew, without looking down, that the raised letters on the corner of the card read VENTRESS.


End file.
